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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween: The night he came home

“What’s your favourite scary movie?”That common refrain made famous in the Scream series is an easy question for me
to answer – Halloween.John Carpenter’s 1978 masterpiece horror
film remains, for me, the quintessential slasher film that scares me shitless
to this day.Right from the opening
credits; I’m covered in goose bumps and chills upon hearing the eerie signature
score.

The movie is so frightening and unnerving because it’s about
more than a masked figure with a knife killing unsuspecting teens.It’s about the psychology of the boy that
grew up to be Michael Myers. It’s about how frighteningly visceral an
experience watching the movie becomes; like the events in the film are
happening to you and you’re not just watching a movie.

On Halloween in 1963 in Haddonfield, Illinois, a young boy
named Michael Myers dressed up for Halloween.He stood outside his house and watched his older sister, Judith, kiss
her boyfriend through the window.When
the two went upstairs to Judith’s bedroom, Michael entered the house, went into
the kitchen and removed a butcher knife from a kitchen drawer.After Judith’s boyfriend left, Michael entered
Judith’s bedroom and saw her half dressed.He stabbed her repeatedly with the butcher knife.He then walked downstairs and out the front
door with the bloody knife in hand.Just
then, Michael’s parents pulled up to the house.Michael’s father pulled off the Halloween mask to reveal a six-year-old
boy.The camera turned from Michael to
the faces of his parents who stared at him in absolute horror.

Following his sister’s murder, Michael is committed to
Smith’s Grove Sanitarium where he is placed under the care of psychiatrist Dr.
Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasance)“I met him, fifteen years
ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no
understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil,
right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale,
emotionless face and, the blackest eyes...the devil's eyes. I spent eight years
trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up
because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and
simply...evil.”

On October 30, 1978, Dr. Loomis and a nurse named Marion
Chambers arrive at the sanitarium to accompany Michael to a court hearing, but
Michael escapes by attacking nurse Chambers and stealing her car.On Halloween, he returns to Haddonfield, to
the same street where he committed his first murder.Dr. Loomis, knowing Michael’s intentions,
follows him there.He appeals to the
town Sheriff for help, but the Sheriff is reluctant to believe him.“Death has come to your little town, Sheriff.
Now you can either ignore it, or you can help me to stop it,” Dr. Loomis appeals.Michael spots a young teenage girl named
Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and becomes fixated on her.

There's nothing more terrifying than Dr. Loomis trying to
stop Michael and Michael chasing Laurie.There are horror movies that are merely bloody gore fests that aren’t
scary so much as they’re violent, and there are bad thrillers that fail to
cause even one hair to stand on end.Then there are those films made by incredibly skilled directors who
don’t just show violence onscreen, but create a truly terrifying experience.
Hitchcock was a master of this and so, too, is John Carpenter.

In Halloween, we see
ordinary, everyday people in nondescript settings and then a human monster
looming off to one side as the camera pans over from the foreground. He wears a
white mask and we are privy to his point of view as Carpenter places the camera
behind the monster’s eyes while he watches a pretty young girl.His breathing is heavy behind the mask and we
hear each and every breath he takes while the eeriest of music plays.If you want to have a terrifying horror movie
experience, watch Halloween, “The
night he came home.” It still
terrifies me to the core.

What is your
favourite scary movie?Let us know in
the comments section.

4 comments:

Good review JBT. A classic that's so perfect to be watched around this time and that's why it's always so loved and beloved by horror fans everywhere. The sequels sucked, though, and same with those weak remakes from Rob Zombie.